Update on bank feeds for Xero Personal

The introduction of automated bank feeds is a key and complex piece of work for the Xero Personal team and understandably it’s also high on the customer request list. We’ve made progress with laying the groundwork for the feeds over the last few releases and now it’s time to give you an update.

In May, the next Xero Personal release will introduce new categorisation or sorting logic, including improved user defined sorting rules. This will help get more transactions automatically sorted into spending or income categories. It will also ensure that the sorting function is then compatible with the style and format of transaction data that will come from the Yodlee data gathering service which is what will be used to deliver automated bank feeds into Xero Personal.

Once this release is complete, the final step for the Xero Personal team will be to connect the Xero Personal app to the banking integration platform. The banking integration platform manages all the automated bank feeds in the Xero small business accounting app – Yodlee bank feeds included.

Growing pains

Our rapid growth, including customer numbers more than doubling over the past 12 months, means the banking integration platform has been processing a large number of transactions. To accommodate this increase, we need to schedule some important improvements and upgrades. This work is already underway and will take another six to eight weeks. It’s important that this is completed before the banking integration team can then connect Xero Personal to the Yodlee based bank feeds.

While growth is a great problem to have it will mean a bit of a delay to our targeted release date for more bank feeds into Xero Personal. We were working toward May, but we’re now targeting Q3 (July-September) 2012. Rest assured we’ll let you know the actual release date nearer to that time.

We know this is frustrating for those of you who are very keen to have the added convenience of bank feeds. But what it does mean is we can fit in another release with various other improvements across the app before focusing 100% back on the introduction of bank feeds into Xero Personal.

@Jono – A mobile app for Xero Personal is still a way off but it’s something we’re very keen to do.

@CJ_NZ – When automatic feeds are implemented in Xero Personal, they will be available in one form or other for most New Zealand banks, and thousands of other banks worldwide. If a feed is available in Xero, it will almost certainly be available in Xero Personal too – though feeds that are provided by partner banks in Xero may instead be provided by the Yodlee data gathering service in Xero Personal.

@Mark – We can’t confirm which feeds will be available until shortly before the release, as the list of available feeds changes constantly. FNB currently appears to be working for a good number of Xero Business users – if that remains the case then it should eventually be available for Personal too. It’s really too early to say though.

Does this also mean you will be fixing the broken Yodlee feed issue that has been around since last July. You know the one where we receive multiple copies of transactions and makes the feature totally unusable for us. We keep getting told it will be fixed soon.

Over promising and under-delivering = FAIL.
I had held off using Xero Personal for the last couple of years due to lack of development and in particular bank fees. The talk was that function was to be in by March/April so I signed up and shifted from my MS Money system which I had been running for 7 years just fine. Now another 6 months for that function to be implemented I don’t hold hope on that timeline either. You talked about implementing bank feeds all the way back in 2010………………

Xero Personal needs the bank feeds team to make feeds available to the Xero Personal product. They have begun work on this and aim to be done within a few months. Xero Personal will be working alongside them where possible but they will still have some work to do once the bank feeds team have done their part. Our estimates currently put delivery of feeds for Xero Personal in Q3 of this calendar year, i.e. July to September.

I’m at the point where I’d like to cancel my personal account and ask for a refund. There have just been too many delays with bank feeds, and as such I’ve completely stopped using Xero Personal because it’s simply far too time consuming to use.

I started getting on top of my personal finances when I first began using Xero Personal, which was fantastic. But after rapidly losing interest because of the punishing manual importing of bank statements, I’m sad to say my personal finances are back to a state of disarray. My business finances are absolutely perfect however, and all because of the automatic bank feeds.

I think I’ll just pretend Xero Personal doesn’t exist until if/when automated bank feeds happen. I hope that’s *not* what Xero are doing, but it certainly feels that way.

My wife uses Xero, but without bank feeds the Xero Personal rather useless. Whilst waiting for XERO to respond on a help issue (took them a day), found ANZ Money Manager – owned by a bank, its free, works with huge number of banks (not just ANZ), and its free!

Like most people commenting here, still hoping for Xero Personal Bank feeds. We’re well into the July-Sep quarter now (that was meant to be 2012 wasn’t it???). Are you still aiming to achieve that PROMISE?
I’ve been waiting since launch day to use Xero Personal, but not interested until the live feeds work (ASB and its subsidiary Bank Direct in my case).

Just now realizing that Xero for mobile does not include access to Xero personal accounts. That seems entirely ridiculous! Come on Xero team… this is reason enough to look for another online financial management tool. I thought it would be great to have business and personal finances in the same system, but both need to be mobile enabled. This should be easy for you folks … you already have the app done!